I am posting this so I can comment on it more later, a post I made to a former students FB page, and it got me thinking."Dreams always exist. What are you willing to forgo to turn your dreams into reality? That is the part parents normally tell their children the most, but it is the harder lesson to learn. Dreams only die when you give up on them."I spent time considering this before writing more. That and a long trip from China to Texas kept me busy.I have read some outstanding quotes concerning dreams over the last few days, as if the universe was helping my thoughts coalesce into some semblance of order. When I think of dreams I think of those future achievements we have for our younger selves. In Highschool I had a dream to travel the world. Born into a family of a middleclass public servant limited my travel to the Western United States. Don’t get me wrong, my childhood was pretty good for the money we had, I could only wish it on every child.My dream of world travel on my parent’s dime was dead before I began, so I did the next best thing: I joined the Navy. That was and is one of the largest decision a seventeen year-old can make. I would say much larger than picking a college. IMHO picking a college is delaying a decision. For many people that delay can be somewhere between 2 and 20 years contingent on the money they decide to funnel into the university system.One of my dreams was to attend college. No money was waiting to fund a four-year party on my parent’s dime, but the Navy is a very good place to get an education. I received six years of college and the Navy paid for a large portion of it. It was not easy, it was damn hard work, at times working twelve-hour shift, with a newborn and a wife that worked nights but we made it work.So, dreams can come true, over the years I have traveled to twenty-one countries and forty-nine States, living in four different countries and ten States. I currently live and teach in China ten-months out of the year. Many people would hate it, I love it. I am happier in China than I have been in a very long time. A benefit of where I work is I get to travel. I post pictures on FB all the time. You should check them out.Another dream I had was to write a book, it took three tries but I finally finished one. I needed to mature, I needed to grow, I needed to find a story I was passionate about; so, I would not to give up. 51000 words later I finished a book. Some might say it needs more work, that is fuel for later posts, but it is the story I wanted to tell, in the style I wanted to tell it in.Not everyone has the grit to follow their dreams, I think that might be the problem. We live in an amazing time. Things can happen today that could never happen in the past. Your dreams are attainable. You are the one that must overcome the roadblocks set in your way. The real question is, do you have enough passion to follow your dreams? If you consider it too hard, you probably don’t. You will need to age a bit; your dream might change. The dream is the payoff. The cost of the dream is everything you must do, or give-up, to make it happen. It takes time, effort, and hard work to make dreams happen. If you think they will come easy they are not dreams, they are fantasy. If your dream is for another person to XYZ is not a dream but an infatuation, you can’t make others follow your dream.Chase your dreams, they are still active until you give up on them and settle. But as a word of warning, if it is not your passion you will discover soon enough, then you find a new dream, or settle for the mundane life that awaits you. That again is your choice. For some people, mundane works.